Mercantilism Quotes

Gold is power Aurum est Potestas

The philosophy of protectionism is a philosophy of war. The wars of our age are not at variance with popular economic doctrines; they are, on the contrary, the inescapable result of a consistent application of these doctrines.

We had much freer trade in the 19th century. We have much less globalization now than we did then.

What is called 'capitalism'is basically a system of corporate mercantilism, with huge and largely unaccountable private tyrannies exercising vast control over the economy, political systems, and social and cultural life, operating in close cooperation with powerful states that intervene massively in the domestic economy and international society.

The Europeans wanted gold and slaves, like everybody else; but at the same time they wanted statues put up to themselves as people who had done good things for the slaves.

Chinese mercantilism is not free trade, but it is far better than American militarism.

The Federal guild system ... was crony capitalism before there was capitalism.

In the last quarter of the eighteenth century bourgeois Europe needed to emancipate itself from that combination of feudalism and commercial capitalism which we know as mercantilism.

Generations of tradition and hard work are required to form a nation of traders.

Protectionism is the institutionalization of economic failure.

Historically, large-scale global trade has served two functions: 1) the exchange of goods between willing sellers and buyers described in Econ 101 textbooks; 2) as a tool of state aggrandizement, in which the private parties are stand-ins for governmental interests.

From Virginia and Maryland are exported communibus annis 90,000 hogsheads of tobacco to Great Britain of which it I supposed 60,000 of them are then exported. But these colonies not being permitted to send their tobacco immediately in proportion to their [foreign] demands, the re-exported tobacco pays double freight, double insurance, commission and other shipping charges. If the [other British] colonies were not restrained from directly importing foreign commodities they would … pay less for them, even by 50 percent, than they do at present

America, which up to the arrival of the Europeans had but one cereal, maize, and but one domestic animal for labor, the llama, and we can rejoice that the Europeans imported with themselves and their tools the ox, the ass and the horse, corn, cotton, sugarcane, coffee and finally the vine and the orange tree, creating there a new world of that glorious society which produces merchandise and which with an extraordinary swiftness of movement has already traversed the two phases of the blackest slavery and the most democratic wage system.

Libertarianism, the political philosophy of rugged individualism, ought to hold a natural appeal to tolerant, anti-statist, free-trade conservatives who deplore the turn taken by the party of Abraham Lincoln toward racial prejudice, authoritarianism, and mercantilism.

The history of commerce is that of the communication of the people.

Nobody seemed to be interested in anything except making money.

May our exports be so great, and our imports so small, that the balance of trade may be in our favor.

Whether the struggle was between English merchants and the American colonies, pre Civil War northern manufacturers vs. southern slave holders, or American grain farmers and auto manufacturers seeking advantage in the Mexican agriculture and labor markets in the 1990s, U.S. policy has reflected the economic clash of interests of the day.

Not only the wealth; but the independence and security of a Country, appear to be materially connected with the prosperity of manufactures.

England is a nation of shopkeepers.

To hear the Japanese plead for free trade is like hearing the word love on the lips of a harlot.

Prior to the advent of the civilization of the Third Estate (mercantilism, capitalism), the social ethics that was religiously sanctioned in the West consisted in realizing one’s being and in achieving one’s own perfection within the fixed parameters that one’s individual nature and the group to which one belonged clearly defined. Economic activity, work, and profit were justified only in the measure in which they were necessary for sustenance and to ensure the dignity of an existence conformed to one’s own estate, without the lower instinct of self-interest or profit coming first.

Mercantilism is based upon the idea that a nation's wealth and security depend upon its ability to regulate and control its external trade at the expense of others.

Let the king fix the rates for the purchase and sale of all marketable goods, having duly considered whence they come, whither they go, how long they have been kept, the probable profit and the probable outlay. Once in five nights, or at the close of each fortnight, let the king publicly settle the prices for the merchants.

The prosperity created at home and overseas by free expansion [of foreign trade] was infinitely greater than could be coaxed by restrictive mercantilism.